They're very skittish and Something has happened. Plus, this human is standing up confidently and aware of them. And this smell is weird but not food.

So they will circle around and investigate for a while, staying together, but not actually get close to her or attack. Looks like there's nine dogs here, same breed. Three 'puppies' that are half grown.

Well, then, that's probably fine.  She'll be heading back to the markets; she needs to sort out the handle scales, there's something weird about their construction.

(The ritual circle gets irreparably mussed up before she goes.)

They follow her for a bit before slinking away.

The market remains as it was. The dirtbike is gone. Someone's trying to sell big stacks of spiky coiled wire, apparently for keeping dogs and thieves out. The exact varieties of junk on offer have shifted a bit. Knife Seller (no name given) eyes her while bickering with a kid that can't be older than ten.

She'll wait for the kid to finish; she has time.

...Really?  Pokey wire is supposed to keep thieves out?  Verse would not even flinch at picking her way through it.  She expects the dogs to be more readily dissuaded, but still.  You'd just need thick gloves, and maybe a cutting tool or two, to get by.

If the seller heard this objection they would counter that it makes some approaches more difficult, at the very least. More time for watchful guards or drones to react.

Kid seems to be trying to sell some mismatched small metal objects. They swiftly move on, still in sales patter, when the seller makes to stand up.

She'll approach the seller.  "Didn't have the supplies on me to properly handle the handle, but I did get the rust off fine.  Blade's gonna be a bit lighter, but it still balances."

She'll let him name his price, first.

"Well I'll be. This does seem to be the same knife."

He motions for her to set it down on a clear spot and takes a good look.

"Thirty eight dollars."

"It just needed proper maintenance, really.  Little bit of blade oil - perhaps a bit more than a little, but still - and either some tools or a lot more elbow grease will set most of your stock right, really.  I figured you'd prefer the handle as-was, since I didn't have the right stuff to replace it - there's a more permanent sealant whoever made these slops on, I think, where the folk that taught me just went for a bit of oiling - same oil, yearly - but I could fix the handle up, too, if it's worth our time for this market.

"Anyway.  Counteroffer at forty even?  Polite of you to make sure I can eat today even if I roll that same twenty back into knives, which I'm inclined to."

"It's not my concern whether you eat or not."

Tap tap. He splits a fingernail on the edge.

"Sharp. Okay, forty. Forty-one, even. If you wanna shop around you can prolly get more but if you want the cash here'n'now..."

"Forty-one it is; you're the knife-seller here, it makes more sense to return this knife to your care."

She presents him with the knife.

And he hands over forty-one dollars.

"By how long it took you to fix that thing up it's probably not the most profitable use of your time. You might call this a low trust society, head. It's different in the city, at least a little. You can earn a hundred, hundred fifty a day on one of the neighborhood crews being dumb muscle. And I mean one of the hard working, hard beating cleanup crews. Blue collar, road repair, street cleaning, demolition work. If you don't look too flaky. Take that as you like."

"It didn't take me all that long, got stuck in a sandstorm coming back in.  Thanks for the advice; I'll take that under advisement."

"'Kay. Stay cool. Think I'm gonna pack up now, anyway."

He puts the cleaver away and starts gathering up merchandise.

After the necessary exchange of pleasantries, she'll go to the people that're selling ration packs, keeping her eye out for anything that looks like a good pack on the way.

Big, capacious, sturdy desert backpack, square and stiff and hard-wearing with many pockets, quite similar to the one Roland had: $95. A small purse: $22. That's what's on offer right now, at least.

Ration Pack Guys is one guy wearing a Hawaiian shirt and wrap-around shades and jeans and a merc-coded man lurking in a pickup truck bed with a gun. Looks like they've worked their way through most of the boxes. On offer are Ration Packs (actually labelled Meal, Ready to Eat), bags of "Nutri-Gel", Green Dragon branded chocolate bars, and HiPro Energy Bars. The chocolate is by far the cheapest.

"Hey there, how's going?" Hawaiian shirt grins at her. "You don't look like the usual crowd. Nice to meet, I'm Xavier. Passing through the border anyway so I figured I'd offload stock we had building up while I'm here, yeah?"

She may have to make one herself, then.  A pity, she's not one for sewing.

"That does seem wise, or at least cunning.  What has you travelling, if I might ask?

"You may call me Kyra."  She had not yet decided if this persona of hers has a family name, but - even if it is a reference only she will know, and bordering on heresy besides, she derives some strength from its invocation.

$30 - $20 + $41 (-$25: knife budget) = $26.

That's her budget.

Now to find the most nutritious way to spend it.

"Family stuff, hope you'll forgive if I'm not too forthcoming but it's a happy occasion- Business one of us had to take care of is done, time to pack out back south to old Knox. It's not even that far, just that we had to wait for a convoy all going north, you know?" The MREs are $18, the gel is $22 but they're bigger packages, the chocolate is $1 per bar and HiPro is $8 each and proclaims "Optimal Nutrition!"

...$1 per bar?!

"Of course, I hardly want to pry.  Or rather I do want to know things but it's hardly my right to know your business.  I'm glad the occasion is pleasant, at least.

"If I'm on a tight budget, what would you recommend, of what you have?  Or, I suppose, what you don't, but I imagine you're trying to make sales, here."

(Ophelia, incidentally, has never once let her eyes slip off the caravan guard.  Just in case.)

It's a pretty small bar compared to the meal packs.

"Well, the choco's extra cheap, they had a whole darn shipping container of it get displaced for higher quality stuff last winter, I bought the whole thing on a lark and now we can barely get rid of it. But Green Dragon chocolate is, eh, you know. Not amazing. MREs are good stuff, designed to keep soldiers on their feet, nutri-packs are great if you're a bit less active. Tell you what, help break down all these empty boxes and I'll give you ten bars of chocolate for free. He doesn't wanna do it and I don't either, honestly."

(The guard nods slightly, no other motion.)

"Sure, why not.  I've nothing else to do with my time right now."

'Not amazing' chocolate that the common soul can buy on the cheap.  What a bounty.

A shame so much of it is hoarded behind those walls.  She'll figure something out.

(And sure, one bar is small, but what about twenty-two bars?  Not that she plans for her food to be chocolate alone for the next several days.  Desserts are not the same as dinners; there's things her body wants and doesn't want and she suspects that this does not have many things her body would want, bar sweetness, and possibly actual cacao.)

"Here, try not to tear 'em, you can just flatten them out like this-" He stands up and demonstrates on one of the many empty boxes stacked haphazardly. The bottom folds out and it collapses down flat. "And stack 'em, and then I'll bundle them all up when you're done. Anything else on top of your choco?"

Ophelia is surprisingly good at breaking down boxes, and even avoiding much tearing or bending.

(She may also be cheating with a spell to get it done faster.)

It's really quite an ingenious work of design, in her unprofessional opinion.  Much better than the average (wooden) crate.

"It'll get done quicker if we split the labor - one of us fetching boxes, another breaking, a third stacking and binding.  I'm somewhat surprised you didn't break them down as you emptied them.  Seems like it would work better than allowing them to accumulate.

"Though I suppose I shouldn't complain about things working out in my favor, hm?

"As for anything else I'd like - I suppose a Nutri-Gel."

"Maybe it would go faster, but I am being unashamedly lazy and paying you to do it instead. One nutri-gel it is. You passing through Cinci too, head?"

"Really, I'm not sure what I'm doing; I wasn't expecting to end up here of all places.  So I'm just trying to get by, get some solid ground back under me, right now.  Afterwards, though - who knows?  I suppose we'll find out when I get there."

(None of this stops her from efficiently breaking down boxes.)

"That's a lot of folks. It's not a great place to be. I know I'm lucky, maybe I'm no rich cyborg or corpo, but got something steady going, you know? But that's life sometimes. Little islands that are yours, huh..."